


Believable Lightness

by indgHosts_27



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alcohol, F/F, Lena Luthor Knows Kara Danvers Is Supergirl, Lena is going through it, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-09 04:31:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18909607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indgHosts_27/pseuds/indgHosts_27
Summary: Lena knows and thinks and suffers. For now.





	Believable Lightness

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing. Woop.

If you stumbled around the world asking the number of 'standard drinks' Lena'd already had tonight the answers you would get would range from "just a few" to "far too many."

But, like all the times before where she’d found herself drunk and alone, with the right amount of foresight and some well-timed prescription migraine pills she would avoid a hangover and return to work tomorrow as if nothing but water or a respectable amount of wine had passed her lips.

She could be her own disaster after 11pm if she was everyone else's Luthor effigy come morning.

 

To be fair she wasn’t often this bad, not recently, not anymore.  
  
A week ago, 11pm on a weeknight could have found her attempting to get work done at her desk. It could have found her restlessly walking the fluorescent halls in the sub levels, heels kicked off, stockinged feet sliding slightly as she read an article from _Frontiers in Neuroinformatics_ , or even, miraculously sleeping soundly in her bed.

It could have found her doing a hundred things more wholesome than drinking herself into this sad stupidity she knew she was headed towards.  
  
These vile hours of weakness would have her sitting in her stupidity and letting her thoughts out to ruin. And in the morning she would be forced to continue on with whatever was left: however little that might be.  
  
Because a week ago, 11pm on a weeknight might have found Lena at home in her apartment pressed against Kara under a blanket on her couch. But today she was decidedly not being functional and was certainly not entwined with Kara on her couch. Today Lena wasn’t sure she’d ever open her door to the woman again.

 

The thought of how far she’d come, and then so obviously how far she had _not_ , hit in a sharp surge of pain across the bridge of her nose, then evened out into a dull pounding.

 

Lena had always known that for people like her there were exceptions to every rule, even ancient, set in stone rules. Rules were rigid, breakable, tempting things that did not often instill a sense of honor in those who could afford to ask for more.

 

She’d never had to imagine a game without them, much less a scenario in which the circumstances changed so much that the need for rules disappeared all together.

 

Lena realized far too late that the scenario without rules, without concessions she’d dictated, fought for, made sure she understood above everyone else playing, is the one that had the potential to hurt her the most. A game without rules where she thought she was safe from harm had the potential to be deadly. A game without rules wasn’t really a game at all.

It was a chance for someone to hold the planet, the cell of Lena Luthor in their palms without cracking her open. It was a choice.

  

And so, Lena sighs as she tilts the glass in her left hand and watches the grey stones slide and then touch slowly beneath the generously poured liquid. At this point the lowball glass is cool but not really cold; cool enough really only to remind her that the glass and the liquid and the stones are distinct from her skin. She throws her head back against her leather armchair and is glad for its deep wings as her head lolls heavily to the side.  
  
She knows exactly what Lex would say about her chilled scotch.

If Lex were still here.

It’s one of the many minutiae of money and men she’s had to explain to Kara.

One of the many things she had _gotten_ to explain to Kara.

 

Because Kara was always listening. Listening to her when she came late for their lunch in her office fuming about rogue investors and board pushback.

  
Kara was listening to her when she wasn’t saying anything, when she was sobbing hard enough to stain Kara’s sweatshirt with mascara and snot where’s she pressed up against her chest, breaking down in the middle of watching “One Day” for no reason she has words to explain.

  
She was listening and watching and laughing as Lena drunkenly pulled her around in a circle, accidentally stepping on her toes as Kara held her up, nodding in mock solemnity when Lena said a little too loudly _“I told you Flatley’s got nothing on me,”_ the music fading in the background.

Lena knew Kara was always listening because even though that night she’d already turned to go sit, she’d still heard Kara whisper _“Queen of the Dance”_

Lena had thought Kara was always listening.

In a literal way, perhaps she was, because she could. After all, if you could eavesdrop wouldn’t you?

But Kara must not have been listening to all of those time Lena mentioned honesty and how it’s absence from the relationships in her life was the reason for the absence of certain people in her life.

Lena wonders now if Kara thought it funny when Lena’d told her over wine one night that certain lies she’d been told were like scars that she ran over again and again in her head at night just to remind herself that it was okay to be more alone if the people who did stick around you were hurting you less.

 

Chilled scotch was for the unrefined. Only the weak used ice. Lena liked her scotch chilled, but only dared to drink it so alone. The stones were from Kara. Delivered to her office a few weeks after the frankly ridiculous conversation they’d two weeks prior about whiskey. Kara was listening then.

 

It's old news really, her pain, and her mind is bored of going over it; both the half that she created herself and the half that she so clearly did not.  
  
But she sits there anyway and wants to be punished so she thinks of the afternoon in Spring last year, when she'd been sitting hunched over her desk at home, not expecting to be disturbed, needed, or bothered for quite a while when a familiar and unnecessary knock made her throat tighten around the air in the room.

Lena's traitorous heart had sped up for a few beats and she'd closed her eyes and willed it to slow down.  
The attempt was more futile than it could have been in other circumstances considering her company, but what Lena did not yet know couldn’t keep her up yet.  
  
_"Come in Kara, you know you don't have to knock."_  
  
Because niceties aside, the woman with keys to her apartment didn’t need to knock. Not even on a Saturday, not even when she was hours early for their movie marathon.

 

And Kara had walked in, smiling and fresh, keys on a carabiner jingling lightly. Smelling like the painfully bright air lazily breezing in through the cracked balcony door.

And there maybe, thinks Lena, is when she’d finally let it hit her. That moment. Seeing Kara in her dark wash jeans and the glasses she knew now she’d never needed. A brown belt low on her hips, her leather messenger bag and a bag full of takeout on her right hip.

Kara had placed the Thai food on the coffee table as she'd flopped down on the couch across from her and then they'd eaten.

  
The whole while Lena had struggled to focus on any of words either of them were saying; her rising panic at war with the blooming she always felt in her chest when she was alone with Kara.

  
It was so easy to exist with Kara, and Lena was panicking because the things she was rapidly being forced to realize she wanted would make it harder and harder to exist like this with Kara without ruining something she couldn’t stand to lose.

  
They were friends, and friends had lunch together. Even if the lunch was brought as a surprise on a Saturday afternoon as a distraction from overwork. Luthors, or more specifically Lena could have a friends if she was careful and good and waited long enough right?

 

It wouldn’t do for Lena to go realizing how in love she was with Kara now would it? She would sit and watch the woman next to her inhale Pad See Ew and Thai iced tea and would crush down the desire to run her fingers over Kara’s knuckles, the veins on her hands, smack the straw from her mouth and tongue the space on her neck where she knew it would smell most like home.

 

She would sit here on this couch and do her best to ignore the telltale swooping pull of arousal and attraction she feels whenever Kara is around and hope that if she ever slipped up it wouldn’t mean an end to this closeness, the end of how free it felt to be herself in front of something living.

 

Lena hopes that inevitably, when she makes a mistake, when Kara sees how completely Lena wants her, wants to belong to her; that the gift of Kara Danvers can forgive her for being human.

 

In the present, Lena laughs. Honest, spluttering laughter while scotch mists into the air as she coughs it out.

Maybe Lena should have taken a stand there, shoved Kara out of her life, or kissed her, pushed harder on the questions she’d never been able to answer without equivocating.

There were so many things Lena could have done to avoid feeling like the betrayed and scorned fiancé she would never be. But there were a thousand more things Kara could have done, a thousand times she could have chosen not to lie.

 

There was the rankling stupidity. The one time Lena had let herself go completely in her adult life she’d expected the same in return. She’d been reckless enough to let her 25 year old heart out and of course it had wrecked itself for an improbability. She had made the mistake of believing that the improbability wouldn’t be built on such a fundamentally shaky premise.

Against all odds was different that against some.

 

Lena dozes off in her chair a few times before she decides to make her way to bed. She slams the empty glass of stones on her nightstand and pulls the bottle of water she’d just filled in the kitchen up to her mouth.

 

She lets herself fall back against the down pillows leaning on her headboard. She feels too heavy to move off of the comforter so she she turn to her right, pulls her knees to her chest and looks out the tinted floor to ceiling windows.

  

How sad she thinks it is to always be the one who loves first, who loves more.

 

How stupid.


End file.
